


puzzle pieces in the sand

by batard_loaf



Category: Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears (2020), Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Naked Cuddling, Post-Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears, Romantic Fluff, Sleepy Cuddles, Tent Sex, but like...offscreen, so this is probably not M but i wanted to be safe, sorry i really tried but they were emphatic that the shagging happens after the iris out again, sunshine as a vague extended metaphor for love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:20:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24672217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batard_loaf/pseuds/batard_loaf
Summary: It's morning in the Negev, and Jack is feeling a little sentimental.--Yet another facet of Phryne Fisher, his perpetual mystery, that he is privileged to discover.
Relationships: Phryne Fisher/Jack Robinson
Comments: 14
Kudos: 142





	puzzle pieces in the sand

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when you show me a high-def cap of Essie in that desert outfit and ask how the hell Phryne didn't get sunburned in the Negev. No, I don't think it actually answers that question. The call of the phracking is just too strong.  
>   
> Posting for K, who said "yes please", and also whined. Also thank u to A for the hand-holding and yelling and B for last looks with my insecurities 😂.

The morning light of the tent is hazy; it seeps in sideways through cracks in the canvas, refracts down through the roofline vent, and catches the whorls and eddies of the copious dust motes in golden, meandering swirls. The heat of the day hasn't yet begun to build, so he idly watches the dust dance and the light track across the floor, feeling sinfully indolent and utterly disinclined to move.

If he shifts he can feel pins and needles from the weight of the sleeping woman in his arms, but even the discomfort saturates him with a deep contentment he hasn't known since 1914. They had surmounted insecurities and obstacles, real and manufactured, to get to this point. There is a certain poetry, he feels, to coming together somewhere in the middle, in all possible respects of the phrase.

Here, now, her easy breath ruffles the hairs on his arms; her lush hips fit snugly against his own; the scent of her, sweat and faded perfume, fills his nose; the down-soft skin of her breasts rises and falls against his fingertips; all conspire to overwhelm him with delirious happiness. She fills his embrace perfectly, as if he were meant to do nothing other than hold her for the rest of his days.

They slept pressed so closely together that her black hair forms a horizon in his vision, obscuring both Phryne and the entirety of the room beneath the tent's heavily decorated walls. His current world, simplified down to yin and yang: below, his serene Dark Lady; above, a transiting ray of sun so harsh in his eyes that he flinches from it. The gesture brushes his lips against the short hairs at the nape of her neck, vulnerable and bared to his attentions by the downward tilt of her chin and artless sweep of her bob. He can briefly taste the talc she covers herself with to protect against the sun, and the flavour brings to mind a treasured memory, of a bright day playing tennis on a lawn.

He's being self-indulgent and sentimental, he knows, but the reprieve granted by this window of time with nothing to do but relax, and pursue his own leisure, has allowed his thoughts to wander and take flights of fancy in a way they cannot do while he is on a case — not even one as esoteric as the quest for an ancient and cursed crypt.

Gradually, the angle of the glaring light changes; Phryne stirs for a moment, hiding her face in the pillow and dropping back into sleep. He lifts his head, flush with affection and thinking to tuck her hair behind her ear, but freezes — his heart leaps into his throat, expanding so full within his chest that it might burst. For throughout the night, in the course of softly murmured confessions, and joyful caresses, and the final concession to sleep as pre-dawn blue lightened the sky, her talcum powder had all rubbed off. And her skin, which he realises he has never seen both unadorned and unclothed before, is bared to honesty, and covered (hands and arms and shoulders, back of her neck and collarbones) in hundreds of tiny, faint freckles.

The honour of seeing such a soft and previously-hidden side of her — the trust implied in this lack of pretence — to his dismay, he feels tears prick at his eyes. She is no goddess, but a human, and warm, and mortal, and in this moment he wants nothing so much as to safeguard this cherished knowledge, to return her trust and keep her heart safe.

Yet another facet of Phryne Fisher, his perpetual mystery, that he is privileged to discover.

Gently, dreamily, he reaches out his fingertips to touch the point of her shoulder, tracing the Milky Way in miniature down her arm, across the tiny fine hairs of her forearm, to her wrist. Back up, and down again. Up, and down. Each pass dimples her skin ever-so-slightly, but the ethereal marks remain, unsmudged and delicate, inviting another feathering touch, another press of his mouth, just to be sure they are real, that they won't wipe away and leave his lover once again marble-skinned and invulnerable.

Outside the tent, a camel grumbles, but inside, the air itself seems to hold its breath. The motion of his fingers is hypnotic, and he loses himself in the comforting repetition of the gesture, thoughts drifting into a ruefully idyllic future, even as he lies cosy and enamoured and entranced in their desert bubble. Some hundreds of heartbeats later, Phryne's hand twitches as he reaches her wrist, and she captures his fingers with her own.

"Jack," she murmurs, groggy and hoarse with sleep. "What..."

When no further words seem to be forthcoming, he grasps her wrist and brings it to his lips, pressing a lingering and open-mouthed kiss to the thin skin over her pulse. She moans contentedly at the touch and stretches, one long leg at a time, then arching her back, before spinning to face him in his arms.

"Morning," she purrs, peeping up at him from beneath the sweep of dark lashes with one sleepy, sky-blue eye. Her nails scratch gently through the sparse hair on his chest, and he traps her hand there, against his steadily pounding heart; the freckles in the notch of her throat beckon, and he nuzzles his cheek against the delicate skin, offering up languid kisses along the way.

"Morning," he greets the unmarked column of her neck, rising up into the protective shadow of her jaw. Her other hand falls to his head, fingers carding through the untidy waves of his hair. He closes his eyes and leans into her hand as her short nails send shivers of pleasure down his spine.

"Were you p— _oh_ —" she chokes off with a gasp, pressing him harder into the tender skin he had just sucked between his teeth. "Were you _petting_ me before I woke?"

"Petting, Miss Fisher," he breathes — he has reached the curve of her ear, and revels in her swooning shudder as the warm air meets her flesh — "implies a level of domestication. Would you say you've been tamed, Phryne?" To punctuate his point, he sends his free hand down between the legs tangled with his, hooking his fingers into the warm, moist hair of her sex and stroking lightly.

"Absolutely"—a moan—"n-not." Her eyes are closed, now, and he brushes butterfly-light kisses across the sun-kissed skin of her cheeks, and the bridge of her nose. Beneath the sheets, her hips undulate against him, and she reaches a hand out to cup and caress his own growing interest.

"Good," he whispers after a pause, suddenly much more distracted. "Good."

Surging forward, she captures his mouth in a kiss, plying him with coquettish lips and teeth and tongue, and he falls into the sensation as she teases her way into his mouth, a feedback loop of connection where her touch below echoes their play above, spiraling higher and tighter until sweat coils with pleasure at the base of his spine.

_Worship._ That's what he was doing, as she slumbered. To say so would merely go to her head, so he holds that word inside his chest, imbuing it into every twist of his wrist and nip of his teeth. _Worship,_ for another mortal, for the bright joy she brings to his life, for a like mind and a quest for justice and adamantine effervescence, all impossibly contained within warm, porcelain skin. Warm, porcelain, _freckled_ skin. Not blasphemy at all, not in the least. Quite the opposite.

With a delighted laugh, she rolls them over, mounting his hips like the seat of the world and rising over him like the sun lighting the air around her, radiant and blinding.

**Author's Note:**

> There was a lot more shvitzing and hand-wringing while writing this than the length probably warranted. Everyone is just so talented in this fandom!!! it's very stressful!!! 😭  
>   
> Did talcum powder actually do the function i gave it in this fic? Who fuckin' knows, man. I spent days researching body cosmetics for sun protection in the 20s but turned up nothing useful. I've seen enough references in fic to her powdering her body (with cosmetics), and she'd need something to absorb sweat and do a bit of sun protection (which talc does, on both counts). I figured it would be a better multi-purpose product than a zinc oxide cream (which wasn't even developed as a sunscreen until 1928ish). So let's call it informed artistic license.  
>   
> Credit for half the words in the last line goes to K, who had custody of the brain cell when it was time to write the end.


End file.
